


[ART] Fear & Trembling

by seinmit



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Art, Edited Digitally, Gen, Religious Horror, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Traditional Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 0
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25527685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seinmit/pseuds/seinmit
Summary: Only he who unsheathes his knife shall be given Isaac again.
Relationships: Jesse Pinkman & Peekaboo Kid
Comments: 11
Kudos: 32
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	[ART] Fear & Trembling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



**Author's Note:**

> These notes are totally optional! I hope the painting is nice to look at on its own. But, if you're interested, the title/summary/words on the painting come from _Fear and Trembling_ , by Søren Kierkegaard, which focuses very heavily on the story of Isaac and Abraham from the Torah/Old Testament. A snippet where I got the actual quote: 
> 
> _But there the saying does hold true that he who will not work shall not eat, and only he who was troubled shall find rest, and only he who descends into the nether world shall rescue his beloved, and only he who unsheathes his knife shall be given Isaac again.  
> ...  
> But what did Abraham do? He arrived neither too early nor too late. He mounted his donkey and rode slowly on his way. All the while he had faith, believing that God would not demand Isaac of him, though ready all the while to sacrifice him, should it be demanded of him. He believed this on the strength of the absurd; for there was no question of human calculation any longer. And the absurdity consisted in God’s, who yet made this demand of him, recalling his demand the very next moment._ \- Søren Kierkegaard.
> 
> I thought a lot about Jesse's relationship to mercy/ruthlessness, especially in terms of his relationship to children and protecting children, while working on this piece--the story of Isaac and Abraham seemed like an interesting counterpoint. If you don't know the story, God asked Abraham to kill his son, Isaac. Abraham goes and does it, with no indication in the story that he's going to stop, until God commands him too and gives him a ram to sacrifice instead. This has fascinated theologians since the first people wrote it down, and Kierkegaard's interpretation has always stuck with me because he really focuses on the anxiety of faith, and how Abraham had no reason to hope, but he did. He hoped against knowledge, he hoped against reason, and the proof of that hope was that he drew the knife to kill his son. Jesse, in many ways, goes back and forth between blind faith and crippling anxiety, especially in regard to children, and I think imagining him in the place of Abraham reveals an awful lot about the type of guy Jesse is, and the tragedy of faith as a concept. 
> 
> I went with the knives/infomercial because that really struck me in rewatching the episode--the knives were also the first thing that got me thinking about the story of Abraham and Isaac.
> 
> Also: I had too much fun with all the numbers. Other than the 1-800 and 1-866 prefixes, all of the numbers have specific references to gematria or Jewish numerology. 
> 
> I hope you like it, and thanks for the opportunity to paint for you!


End file.
